Bastion Beach

We went for a stroll along the beach at Bastion Point on 24 February.  The dominant feature of the landscape was the plume of smoke from parts of the Howe Range area.

This is shown in the satellite image from Digital Earth Australia.  This matches the comment on the Emergency Services Victoria website that it is burning "within containment lines".  A helicopter with dangling bucket was in the area of the smaller fire (nearish to Marshmead) and one went to look at the big area.

There has been a reasonable amount of commentary on the community Facebook page with two views put forward.  One camp are complaining that Parks Victoria are doing nothing - with particular reference to public communication.  The others are saying the job is very hard and they are doing their best.  No official comment from Parks or DEWLP as usual although one comment is from a person who works in an agency within DEWLP. Hopefully we'll get more rain to dampen it down again, but my thinking is that the only way this fire will stop is when there is nothing left to burn.  Hopefully it will stay within the containment lines.

WRT birds the area of exposed sand is not huge.  A few Bar-tailed Godwits were visible and appeared to be starting to get into breeding plumage.  On the shoreline towards the (closed) mouth there were a good number of Red-capped Plovers and Red-necked Stints: the latter were showing no traces of colour.

 A large flock of cormorants were mainly Little Black with a couple each of Great and Little Pied mixed in.

 A passing kayak fisherman caused them to move on a tad!

One plover seemed a bit larger than the rest and turned out to be the first Double-banded PLover of this season.  A recent arrival from New Zealand.

 Here it is with a red-cap for comparison.

 We had some curiosity about what the gull was schlepping around.  I think it was seaweed , rater than a crab.

Coming back along the beach we spotted a sea star clinking to what appeared to be a broken shell with attached sea weed.